All I Ask Is To Be Held

The English Say, Yours Truly, And Mean It. The Italians Say, I Kiss Your Feet, And Mean, I Kick Your Head.

The Old Lie:dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori.

The Pallor Of Girls' Brows Shall Be Their Pall; Their Flowers The Tenderness Of Patient Minds, And Each Slow Dusk A Drawing-down Of Blinds.

Then, When Much Blood Had Clogged Their Chariot-wheels I Would Go Up And Wash Them From Sweet Wells, Even With Truths That Lie Too Deep For Taint. I Would Have Poured My Spirit Without Stint But Not Through Wounds; Not On The Cess Of War.

Do You Know What Would Hold Me Together On A Battlefield? The Sense That I Was Perpetuating The Language In Which Keats And The Rest Of Them Wrote!